V. I. Lenin

Concluding Remarks at a Conference of Chairmen of

Uyezd, Volost and Village Executive Committees Of Moscow Gubernia

October 15, 1920

Delivered:December 2, 1920First Published:Published in 1920 In the book:Verbatim Reports of the Plenary Sessions of the Moscow Soviet of Workers’, Peasants’ and Red Army Deputies;Published according to the text in the bookSource:Lenin’sCollected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965,Volume 31, pages 334-338Translated:Julius KatzerTranscription\HTML Markup:David Walters&R. CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License

Comrades, I shall have to confine myself to some brief
    concluding remarks, because from the very beginning of the meeting
    it has been clear that there is quite a strong desire, in fact a
    very strong desire, to upbraid the central government. That would,
    of course, have been useful, and I have considered it my duty to
    listen to everything said in criticism of the government and its
    policy. I think that the discussion should not have been wound
    up.(Hear, hear!)However, while listening to your
    remarks, I have been surprised to see how few precise and specific
    proposals you have put forward. Of the two questions-the foreign
    affairs and the home affairs of our Republic—I think that
    home affairs interest you more. That is how it should be. But,
    comrades, you forget that home affairs depend on foreign affairs,
    and I therefore have thought it my duty to tell you how and why
    the Polish war brought us up against the international
    imperialists and then led to peace; how and why this peace is
    precarious, and what has to be done to consolidate it. I hope
    that, in this matter, after you have discussed all the other
    questions and set forth all the problems in a calm fashion, you
    will not behave like certain personages in the fable mentioned by
    one of the speakers, about the lynx which waits for the goat and
    the ram to fall out, so as to devour them both. You will not give
    that satisfaction to the lynx-of that I am sure. However furiously
    the goat and the ram may clash, we shall give no satisfaction to
    the lynx.(Applause and cheers.)Comrades, if extreme
    dissatisfaction and impatience have been expressed here so often,
    we all know that freedom of speech is the primary rule of
    procedure at meetings. At this meeting you have broken this
    rule-it is because the majority of the peasants are experiencing
    all too severely the effects of the very grave situation that has
    arisen in the localities. Most of the peasants are feeling all too
    severely the effects of famine, cold and excessive
    taxation.("Hear, Hear!" and applause.)It was, in the
    main, for this that most of the speakers upbraided the central
    government, directly and indirectly. One got a feeling that the
    comrades did not even want to give a full hearing to speakers in
    whose speeches they heard no replies to this acute problem. One of
    the speakers, I do not remember which, said that in his opinion I
    had evaded this issue. I consider this assertion groundless.

The position of the Soviet Republic is most grave, which made
    us hurry to conclude peace before the winter campaign set in. That
    haste stemmed from a desire to avoid a winter campaign, a
    realisation that it is better to have a worse frontier, that is to
    say, to get less Byelorussian territory and be in a position to
    wrest fewer Byelorussian peasants from the yoke of the
    bourgeoisie, than to impose fresh hardships and another
    ’winter campaign on the peasants of Russia. Such were our
    reasons. You know that the poor harvest of this year has
    aggravated the peasants’ need. However, the measure in which
    this ties us in our home policy is not generally realised. I think
    that you will all be fully informed on the subject of
    taxation. You will also hear what the speaker on the food policy
    will have to say. And all I want is to draw your attention to the
    close connection between the internal situation and the
    external. Let us take, for example, the sittings of our Council of
    Defence and the Council of People’s Commissars. At these
    meetings we even have to deal with the question of the running of
    each train, the grain-requisitioning quotas imposed upon the Great
    Russia gubernias—quotas that are often extremely
    rigorous. Two or three weeks ago the Council of People’s
    Commissars considered the question of the excessively rigorous
    quotas, established by the central authorities; it decided that
    they should be reduced. At whose expense is this to be done? There
    can be only one reply .to this question: only at the expense of
    outlying regions that are richer in grain, namely, Siberia and the
    Kuban, and by making it possible to obtain grain from the
    Ukraine. We are getting grain from Siberia and from the Kuban, but
    we cannot get grain from the Ukraine because warfare is raging
    there, and the Rod Army has to fight the hands that infest that
    area. We have to settle the problem of almost every train. We have
    seen what this meeting has turned into, the dissatisfaction
    expressed here, and the voices raised in loud protest. We know the
    reason for all this. We know that all those who have revealed such
    emotion here are sick at heart because there i3 no fodder,
    livestock is perishing, and taxation is so heavy. The comrade who
    said that these cries of protest were something new to us was
    wrong. Both from telegrams and reports from the provinces we know
    of the heavy loss of cattle as a result of the grave fodder
    situation, and we all realise the difficulties. But we also know
    the solution. There is only one solution—Siberia, the Kuban
    and the Ukraine.

From Siberia we had to bring up troops to the Wrangel front,
    and in the Council of Defence there were two or three very painful
    meetings when comrades came with the demand that we should cancel
    the special food trains. After the most bitter wrangling and
    bargaining, we ended by deciding to somewhat curtail the number of
    food trains. However, we would like to hear more weighty and,
    serious criticism. We know all about the outcries and lamentations
    that the farms are being ruined. That is why even the truce that
    comes into force on the 18th, even though the Poles are entitled
    to cancel it at forty-eight hours’ notice, will give us some
    respite and relief; in any case there will be more trainloads of
    grain from Siberia and the Kuban in the next few weeks. Of course,
    the need is so acute and the crop shortage so severe that the
    relief this will provide will not be very great. We should not, of
    course, deceive ourselves and say that it will remove all our
    difficulties and enable us to discontinue the grain requisitioning
    quotas.

That is something I cannot and will not say. State your views
    precisely, let us have your definite suggestions for relieving the
    heavy taxation, and the representatives of the workers’ and
    peasants’ government will examine them with the closest
    attention, because we must find a way of easing this exceedingly
    painful situation. There is no less grain in the Ukraine than in
    the Kuban; there is perhaps even more, but so far we have been
    able to get hardly anything from the Ukraine under the grain
    quotas, which have been fixed at 600,000,000poods, and
    which could meet all the needs of our industries and help restore
    them. We have struck the Ukraine off our accounts: not a singlepoodcan be expected from the Ukraine, because of the
    bandits there, and because the war with Wrangel compels us to say
    that we cannot be sure of getting a singlepoodfrom the
    Ukraine. Such is the situation, which, notwithstanding your
    legitimate impatience and quite justified indignation, makes us
    divert all our attention to the Polish and the Wrangel
    fronts. That is why when comrades say that they are not against
    giving help, but they want that help to be given freely, we say:
    "Go and help the front!"

I shall conclude my brief remarks by reminding you of what I
    said at the end of my report, namely, that every time the Soviets
    have had to get out of a difficult situationwhen Denikin was in
    Ore!, or when Yudenich was within fiveverstsof
    Petrograd-when the situation seemed not only difficult, but
    desperate, a hundred times as difficult as it is now, the Soviet
    government got out of that situation by calling together meetings
    of workers and peasants like the present one and telling them the
    unvarnished truth. That is why I say that whether or not Wrangel
    will soon be crushed depends, not on a decision of the central
    government but on the way in which the representatives from the
    localities, after giving vent to their dissatisfaction, after
    finishing the struggle which the above-mentioned comrade has
    called a clash between the goats and the rams-an indispensable
    thing-and after voicing their complaints, accusations and
    recriminations-the way in which local representatives reply to the
    question whether they themselves want freedom, quite apart from
    any decision by the central government. Here we cannot give
    orders; it will depend on your own decisions, when you come to
    discuss the state of affairs, the grain-requisitioning quotas,
    taxation, Wrangel, etc.-it will depend on you. Let each man have
    his say; give vent to all your reproaches; censure us ten times
    more severely-that is your right and your duty. You have come here
    to express your opinion plainly and bluntly. But when you have
    done all that, just reflect calmly what you want to contribute and
    do so as to finish with Wrangel as quickly as possible. I think
    that we shall reach such thorough agreement on this question that
    I repeat in conclusion-never will the lynx benefit from our
    arguments, recriminations and
    accusations.(Applause.)